2024 Year in Review
It’s the new year and it’s time to do my yearly review to help me plan or at least make me feel like I have for 2025.
I’m following last years format as I liked how that turned out. You can read the 2023 year in review here.
If you’ve somehow stumbled across this and have never done anything like this before, I suggest blocking out some time and have a good look at how your year went. What you liked, what you didn’t.
2024 in Review
General Overview
From memory and not looking at past notes the biggest thing for 2024 for me personally was changing my job.
I’ve covered it before in the blog but the long story short was sometime in 2025 the job I had for 10 years was going to move to a different organisation to manage. There was uncertainty about what that would mean.
I got paid OK, I had hours that worked well in some regards and I could work on my own stuff most of the time. But I felt is was unsustainable and I needed a change.
I started reading the book What Colour is Your Parachute, believing in my abilities more and decided to go find a new job.
In what other people call a crazy job market with so many people trying to find work I was able to get a new job.
So yeah that was a big thing for me this year.
Highlights
New Job
As mentioned above, the new job was a highlight for this year. Here’s a couple of reasons why.
- More opportunities for growth
- Everyone in my team and department is really nice and supportive
- Mon-Fri with weekends off which is still a novelty 6 months into it
I’m happy I made that change.
48 Hour Film Competition
I got asked last minute to help with this. Was pretty cool and learned a lot. Will see if I am involved next year.
It’s good to interact with different people.
Misty Flicks Film Festival
Held in November. This time I went from random volunteer to Event Co-Ordinator. I’d agreed to this while at the old job, and worked on it while at the new job.
The event itself was great.
The problem I had was I agreed to it when I had plenty of spare time with the old job, the new job takes up a lot of my time now. It was a bit of a juggle to manage the things I needed to.
It also reinforced the things I already knew about myself and the things I don’t like doing and aren’t my strongest areas.
Birthday Trip
We shot down to Christchurch for a Birthday Party, it was a lot of fun.
Cruise
We went on a cruise for the first time. It was great. We had a lot of fun even if the destination changed from Picton to Bay of Islands. The weather was great, and we had fun on the ship.
It was only 4 days, was a bit of a test to see if we liked it. All other ones run out of Australia so will have to sort out passports for the next trip.
500th Podcast Recording
We hit 500 episodes of the podcast this year which is crazy to think about. We’ve been going for 10 years now.
We did a live recording which went well with the usual suspects in attendance.
In hindsight we should of had it on a different day and possibly a different venue, but it went well I think.
It’s great knowing people listen to this thing we create. Most of our downloads are from people in the US, but we have no idea who is listening to us.
Other Things
We went to Fieldays again this year for the podcast, I went to Armageddon as well. I got a fancy plaque thing for 10 years at the old job.
That’s all that springs to mind, I’m sure there were a lot of other things.
Lowlights
Balancing Things
Or more likely trying to do the things I want do with the time I have available in a normal 8-4:30 Mon-Fri job now.
Some days it’s a bit of a struggle to be honest.
People that go from one job to another that has the same hours it won’t be as big of a shift, for me it was a big change and something I knew would happen no matter what the new work situation was.
Health
It’s crazy just how much more I sit around now at the new job than I did at the old job which seemed worse.
I really do need to sort out my health, otherwise it could turn to shit and then what have you got. I did do a step challenge at work this year, it went well but I could have done better.
2025 Planning and Forward Thinking
General Overview
I think the main thing for 2025 is to stay focused. Keep the end goal in mind and always stick to the plan. It’s a simple plan.
Productivity
This is almost exactly the same as last year’s post to be honest. As I read it now, not much has changed or my thinking around it.
- Knowing exactly what I want to do
- Blocking out time
- Focusing on the work at hand
Yeah, just more of the same. If you are stuck on being productive, check out last years post with the plan I have there, check out more blog posts on productivity.
There is some really good content on YouTube, but don’t get stuck in the rabbit hole of watching without doing. Watch 2 videos, work on yourself.
Work Stuff
It’s nice having a change.
2025 will be more learning and hopefully using what I have learned to take it to the next level. One person is leaving on a secondement for the rest of the year. I don’t think they will come back, and it will be a bit of a change. Will need to keep on top of everything at work.
Health
Need to keep on top of this. Just with simple things like stretching and going for walks. I’m liking the idea of intermittent fasting as well, which I have done on the odd occasion, but would really like to see if that can help me.
Finances
I took a gamble with the new job thing and took a decent pay cut to start from the bottom again.
With new opportunities and career progression hopefully sometime this year I will get a pay bump to around what the old job was making. To do this within a year would be great.
The last quarter of the year I think our spending went a little bit off budget, nothing crazy, but it could have been better.
I’m planning to try and stick to what we have allocated in YNAB as close as possible. While putting some money aside. It’s very easy to spend small amounts of money on food, which over time adds up.
Reading
I usually have some sort of book I am part way through reading. Sometimes I can get through it quickly or it takes forever.
For the longest time I was using a ebook reader app on my phone, which is fine, but all the other phone things means it is easy to get distracted.
In the last couple of weeks in the midst of tidying up the garage I came across and old Kobo Glo, it’s around 12 years old. After some searching I found out you can get it up and running again.
Side loading books onto it via Calibre and I now have an ebook reader again and so far I have read more in one sitting on that than I ever did on my phone.
Looking forward to reading more. I’m only putting a couple of books on it at a time instead of adding hundreds.
Projects
This year was a bit quiet on the project front in general due to the above stuff. But I didn’t forget they were there.
I’m not going to write what went well and what didn’t as there is more in the latter category. I’ll just put down my thoughts from the past year.
Current Projects
Giant Pumpkins NZ
On the website front it all seemed to be working with less things breaking like they did in the past.
I got some serious traffic for the weight estimation tool when the US growers are growing which is great to see.
I sucked at updating some of the pages in the off season. I just need to do it.
More people signed up to the email newsletter as well which is awesome to see.
So overall the site is getting used. I’ve done some blog posts and some social media posts. I feel better sorting out video now than I have in a long time, just need to work on making it engaging and interesting.
Op Shop Directory
I barely touched this at all this year. Apart from basic website updates I only did a couple of listing updates.
Really need to be in the right frame of mind and have a lot of spare time to sort this stuff out. It doesn’t help that this now resembles some of the stuff I do in my new job.
Google keeps stuffing around with the ads and wanting me to update something, I am in two minds of removing all the ads from the site.
I also went through and cleaned out all the random posts I had on the Facebook page. I don’t think they were super useful. I’m working out a plan moving forward on what to post.
The Chris and Sam Podcast
I did a bit of an overhaul just before the 500th podcast recording on the website. I’m happy with it. I even managed to put a button on there that randomises the post you will see.
I didn’t do any more in regards to getting episodes up onto YouTube. It’s supposed to be able to do it automatically with the podcast’s feed, but every time it just craps out.
The ones I do have uploaded haven’t had any watches/listens.
In a perfect world I would put everything up there. Just unsure if I can be bothered committing that much time.
Audio Scrapbook
Another project that really took a back seat, yet again.
I do still believe in it, and think it needs to be all sorted.
So I went through and rewrote all the pages on the site. Changed a couple of images for consistency and want to get the content written for the DIY guide. The plan is to have that written before I get back to work.
Something I can do if I don’t do anything else. The key part is trying to get the information across without being to wordy.
New Projects
I only have one other project I am working on that I haven’t put on this site. Still want to get content created for it. Then I will be happy.
Other 2025 Thoughts
Coming up with a plan, sticking to it and pivoting if needed is the key to having a good year I think.
I’m not sure what this year will bring to be honest but if I can be as prepared as possible, well that’s fine by me.
Have a great one, don’t stress too much and work towards your goals.
